The num­ber of acres the gov­ern­ment idles for con­ser­va­tion is con­tract­ing, and that’s caused as much by mar­ket forces — or “nature,” as one ag­ri­cul­ture ad­voc­ate put it — as it is by any­thing Con­gress has done or plans to do.

Wheth­er or not the House and Sen­ate can get in­to con­fer­ence over their farm bills — both of which cut back con­ser­va­tion lands — the mar­ket’s ap­pet­ites for more crops are beck­on­ing farm­ers to aban­don the Con­ser­va­tion Re­serve Pro­gram and place idled lands back in pro­duc­tion.

The pro­gram, a key part of Title II of the farm bill, was es­tab­lished in 1985 as an in­cent­ive for farm­ers to rent mar­gin­ally pro­duct­ive land to the gov­ern­ment. The farm­ers would col­lect a rent­al fee, and the gov­ern­ment could help pre­serve the en­vir­on­ment and cre­ate wild­life hab­it­at.

Farm­ers face a com­pet­it­ive bid­ding pro­cess to enter the pro­gram, which is ad­min­istered by the Ag­ri­cul­ture De­part­ment, and en­vir­on­ment­al ad­voc­ates say the pro­gram has been gen­er­ally re­garded as suc­cess­ful. In the mid-1990s, the pro­gram saw its peak, with nearly 37 mil­lion acres en­rolled — roughly the area of Illinois. In Ju­ly of this year, about 26.9 mil­lion acres were en­rolled, ac­cord­ing to USDA.

But while en­vir­on­ment­al groups want to see the pro­gram strengthened, in­dustry gen­er­ally wants to see more land brought in­to pro­duc­tion. Spurred by an in­crease in com­mod­ity prices that began in 2006, many farm­ers want to take land out of the pro­gram and put it back in use, said Keith Collins, the former chief eco­nom­ist at the Ag­ri­cul­ture De­part­ment.

“When prices double, there’s money to be made by a lot farm­ers by farm­ing,” Collins said.

As for gov­ern­ment, law­makers must strike a bal­ance in an at­mo­sphere that in­volves stark trade-offs. Cut­ting the num­ber of acres in the pro­gram can ac­com­mod­ate rising mar­ket de­mand for crops, but it does so at the ex­pense of con­ser­va­tion. The House Ag­ri­cul­ture Com­mit­tee’s ver­sion of the farm bill would cut the num­ber of au­thor­ized acres in the pro­gram from 32 mil­lion to 24 mil­lion.

“We have a lot of stom­achs we need to feed — not just na­tion­ally,” said Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., the Con­ser­va­tion, En­ergy, and Forestry Sub­com­mit­tee chair­man. “I also think it’s a right size to be able to fo­cus where this in­vest­ment is most ef­fect­ively pur­posed.”

Collins framed it this way: “In a peri­od of time when there’s a big de­mand on the land base to pro­duce crops for en­ergy — to pro­duce crops for what’s go­ing to be 9 bil­lion people by 2050 — you might want to al­low that land to be in pro­duc­tion. But there’s also a lot of land that prob­ably shouldn’t be in pro­duc­tion. So de­term­in­ing the op­tim­al size of what the con­ser­va­tion re­serve pro­gram should be and what kind of land should go in it is a really dif­fi­cult policy choice.”

Some ar­gue that par­ing back the num­ber of acres in the pro­gram makes sense. The think­ing goes like this: With com­mod­ity prices up and farm­ers put­ting their land back in­to pro­duc­tion, Con­gress faces an op­por­tun­ity to cut a pro­gram that in some ways was already shrink­ing. “The be­ne­fit for do­ing it in stat­ute is that they get cred­it for those sav­ings, which they wouldn’t get if they let nature take its course,” said Ferd Hoe­fn­er, the policy dir­ect­or at the Na­tion­al Sus­tain­able Ag­ri­cul­ture Co­ali­tion.

But oth­ers say that there should be a more stable way to pre­serve land. The “fatal flaw” with the pro­gram, says Craig Cox of the En­vir­on­ment­al Work­ing Group, is that farm­ers merely rent their land to the gov­ern­ment. Many would like to see an op­tion for a per­man­ent trans­fer — or per­haps a lease longer than the cur­rent 10 years — but costs make it a tough sell in Con­gress.

“The re­ac­tion to that has been mostly fa­vor­able as a concept, but then gets im­me­di­ately shut down when it gets scored by [the Con­gres­sion­al Budget Of­fice] be­cause there’s a big up­front cost,” Hoe­fn­er said.

The ques­tion, say some law­makers, is wheth­er there is an in­cent­ive for pro­du­cers to per­man­ently en­roll their land in the pro­gram and wheth­er the farm bill gives farm­ers enough as­sist­ance to care for the land prop­erly.

“Mak­ing the rent­al agree­ments per­man­ent might ac­tu­ally be a dis­in­cent­ive for pro­du­cers who may balk at the idea of per­man­ently giv­ing up con­trol of their acre­age,” said Con­ser­va­tion, En­ergy, and Forestry Sub­com­mit­tee rank­ing mem­ber Tim Walz, D-Minn. “At the end of the day, this is private land. Our farm­ers are good stew­ards of the land and will work to en­sure con­ser­va­tion ef­forts con­tin­ue.”

Oth­er ar­gu­ments against par­ing back the pro­gram are eco­nom­ic. Cox ar­gues that sav­ings from the pro­gram are not go­ing en­tirely to de­fi­cit re­duc­tion, as some budget hawks claim, but rather to oth­er pro­grams.

“It seems as if there’s still a long way to go be­fore this new farm bill be­comes a real­ity, and I think more and more people and more and more mem­bers of Con­gress are be­gin­ning to un­der­stand that this is a bait-and-switch that’s be­ing pro­posed,” Cox said. “They’re pro­pos­ing cut­ting one pro­gram but then us­ing 75 per­cent of the sav­ings to gin up new pro­grams.”

Thom­spon ar­gued that the cuts in the con­ser­va­tion title sim­pli­fy the way farm­ers and ranch­ers use pro­grams to im­prove lands in pro­duc­tion, which saves tax­pay­ers money. “We’ve taken 23 pro­grams down to 13. Part of that is to make it more easy for farm­ers and ranch­ers to nav­ig­ate,” he said. “It was not an easy pro­cess. I’m pleased to where we’ve come.”

Title II of the House ver­sion of the farm bill main­tains cur­rent fund­ing for the En­vir­on­ment­al Qual­ity In­cent­ives Pro­gram, which helps farm­ers meet reg­u­la­tions through cost-share in­cent­ives. Crit­ics of the pro­gram ar­gue that money from it goes to big pro­du­cers who use that money for con­cen­trated an­im­al-feed­ing op­er­a­tions. Ad­voc­ates, mean­while, say the pro­gram gives fin­an­cial and tech­nic­al as­sist­ance to pro­du­cers and helps them plan and im­ple­ment con­ser­va­tion prac­tices.

If the pres­id­ent hasn’t signed a meas­ure in­to law by Oct. 1 — which seems un­likely — the gov­ern­ment may not be au­thor­ized to en­roll any new lands for con­ser­va­tion through the gen­er­al sign-up pro­cess. But many, in­clud­ing Thompson, say the House and Sen­ate will ul­ti­mately find agree­ment on the con­ser­va­tion title.

“My im­pres­sion is that there is more com­mon ground than not,” Thompson said. “I’m very op­tim­ist­ic that we’re gonna be able to get that done.”

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